


A Year in the Life

by geniusphilester (gorgeousnerd)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Engagement, M/M, Screenplay/Script Format, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 23:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20536553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeousnerd/pseuds/geniusphilester
Summary: You know what the next thing would be? Gay wedding!(A transcript of the amazingphil video A Year in the Life, featuring Daniel Howell.)





	A Year in the Life

**Author's Note:**

> I read [this](https://geniusphilester.tumblr.com/post/187494735367/omg-i-had-never-thought-of-dans-you-know-what) Tumblr post theorizing that Dan and Phil were preparing the audience for them being engaged, and my brain came up with this.

**Setting: Phil's set in their second London flat (probably? But it could be any white wall). He looks just as pale and Voldemort-like as ever.**

Phil: Hi, guys! Remember how I said I wanted to talk about my personal life more? That's what this video is about. And I'm gonna need a little help to share this with you. Say hello to my special guest...

[Dan wheels in on a chair and stops next to Phil, waving sarcastically]

Dan: Never could have guessed I'd show up, did you?

Phil: What, I could have invited Tyler back.

Dan: I would have...a few things to say if you had Tyler involved in this particular video.

Phil: [laughs, covers his mouth with his left hand, on which a ring is visible on his ring finger]

[Camera zooms in dramatically to Phil's hand, with slow-motion of Phil's demonic laughter in the background]

**Setting: Isle of Man, pictures from their Instagram stories in December 2018**

Phil: So when did we decide we were going to get engaged at Christmas 2018?

Dan: Around the same time I came up with the idea for my latest video. Yes, I know, I haven't uploaded since June, I've heard you all complaining, but you can't rush art. I've been working on other projects.

Phil: Like planning a wedding.

Dan: We'll get to that. We saw all our friends getting houses, getting dogs, getting married, getting kids...

Phil: We're not ready for some of that.

Dan: Yet.

Phil: If ever.

Dan: Maybe someday.

Phil: But we've been together for ten years now. Ten! Can you believe it?

Dan: We're all dying.

Phil: And it's something I've always wanted, to get married. Maybe my mum wants it more than me, but it's always nice to have the fam-a-lam around for a good romp.

Dan: It seemed right to propose at Phil's parents' for Christmas.

Phil: Well, Christmas Eve-Eve.

Dan: I mean, I was still going to my mom's for Christmas itself. Can you believe I wasn't out to my family yet?

Phil: Oh, you should show them the email.

Dan: Right!

**Setting: Dan's coming-out email from Basically I'm Gay, complete with paragraphs that weren't visible the first time around**

Dan: [reading the new section] The reason I'm telling you this now is because I'm getting married. I'm sure it's no surprise that I've been with Phil for years. You've seen how happy he makes me and how good our lives are together, and now you know it's because we're the closest thing to soulmates that exist, with all that implies. Not a whole lot is going to change there. We're just going to live more authentically, and we want to be able to invite you to share in that.

**Setting: Isle of Man, but this time, it's pictures of Dan and Phil taking turns proposing and crying and smiling and hugging each other**

Phil: We do have video of the proposals--

Dan: We proposed at the same time, as it was a joint decision. And I don't want to hear about how we ruined it by not making it spontaneous. It's romantic as [bleep], you nerds, planning deliberately to spend your life together.

Phil: Dan.

Dan: You don't have to do a public proposal that your boyfriend doesn't see coming at a football match or--

Phil: Dan, I think they get it.

Dan: [sighs] Fine. We shared our general ring preferences with each other, but we left it vague enough that there would be some surprise. I hope that works for some of you.

Phil: Might have worked better if someone hadn't used _my_ laptop to buy _my_ ring.

Dan: Hey, you didn't have to look.

Phil: So we got engaged with my family there, and then it was time to start...

**Setting: Phil's set**

[dramatic music]

Dan and Phil in unison: Wedding planning.

Dan: See, this is one of the reasons we waited so long to do this. We're don't take our projects lightly.

Phil: Plus, I had to rebalance the workaholic thing a bit. Get more [curves hands around] spherical.

Dan: It wasn't just you.

Phil: So we might not have had to reserve a dress eighteen months in advance...

Dan: We didn't _have_ to. But I did give it some serious thought. Have you seen some of those wedding gowns? Works of art. Problem was, every dress I liked would have needed serious heels, and I didn't want to break my neck on my own wedding day.

Phil: And you had to finish your video.

Dan: There was that.

Phil: We decided to schedule it this way: first half of 2019, work projects. Second half of 2019, Project Wedding.

Dan: That sounds like a reality show.

Phil: Missed opportunities.

Dan: But we did pick out tuxes out early.

**Setting: A designer shop. Phil's holding the camera and looking into it.**

Phil: Hi guys, and welcome to...the tux fitting. Here you'll see our first groom, one Daniel Howell, getting pinned in his jacket.

[The camera flips to Dan, standing on a pedestal in front of three mirrors. He looks radiant, and only partially because he's pasty under a lot of lights. He's wearing a black jacket with visible silver pins.]

Dan: Do I look like I belong in a Tim Burton movie?

Phil: Maybe if you had some stitches in your skin.

Dan: How about we skip that.

Phil: How are you feeling about the wedding prep?

Dan: Surprisingly nervous!

Phil: Aw! Why?

Dan: I don't know! It's actually not that different than planning any other event we've done for work or whatever. And it's not like I haven't thought about this for a while.

Phil: Maybe that's what it is. You've had a chance to overthink it.

Dan: Always a mistake.

[The camera switches to Phil getting white trousers fitted. A pair of confident older hands, belonging to some mostly unseen tailor, is hemming up the bottoms, revealing Phil's characteristically mismatched socks.]

Dan: Here we have Phil Lester wearing orange and green socks to his tux fitting.

Phil: They're my lucky socks!

Dan: Will you be wearing these on your wedding day?

Phil: [voice wavering for dramatic effect] You'll have to see!

Dan: Really.

Phil: Well, it's not like I'm going to surprise you with some six-foot train or something.

Dan: Not with that attitude you aren't.

**Setting: Phil's set.**

Phil: And then came the part that always comes next in wedding planning...going on the honeymoon!

[record scratch]

Dan: Wait, what.

Phil: Well, I guess it was more of a stag do. But the way we do it.

**Setting: Pictures from their Instagrams and Dan's nice camera of their desert/Vegas trip.**

Dan: Where Phil goes out with his brother and I stay in the hotel room and watch Stranger Things.

Phil: Where we go out to the desert and pretend we're outdoorsy.

Dan: Oh god, that hike to the observatory.

Phil: I was thinking about that dune hike you and Martyn tried to take us on.

Dan: Why you and Cornelia put up with us, I'll never know.

**Setting: The AirBNB out in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The sun's setting and the sky's purple and orange.**

Phil: Hey, guys. Look how beautiful it is out here!

Dan, from off camera: AND HOT.

Phil: Well, if someone didn't wear long black layers everywhere he went.

Dan: STILL HOT.

[Phil pans the camera around to look at how big and empty the sky is. He stops on Dan, who's sitting with his feet - the only part of him not draped in long black clothes - in the pool. He waves at the camera.]

**Setting: Phil's set.**

Phil: And we also went to Las Vegas.

Dan: But what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Phil: Like that printer I destroyed. [He laughs when Dan gives him a flat look.] What? It really wasn't going anywhere after what I did to it.

Dan: And then after that, we came home...

Phil: Got a fish!

Dan: That wasn't part of the wedding planning.

Phil: But look at him!

**Setting: Norman's tank, as he swims around with his pretty fins.**

Phil: He's so cute!

Dan: Pure aesthetic right there.

**Setting: Phil's set.**

Dan: So yes, we got a fish. But we also started looking at venues.

Phil: We weren't sure if we wanted to do it closer to London, where a lot of our friends are...

Dan: And close to my family.

Phil: Or if we wanted to do it up north.

[zoom in on Dan's "wow he just said that" face]

Dan: Do...it...?

Phil: Get married?

Dan, recovering: Right. Get married close to Phil's family, and our northern friends.

Phil: Or we could do it in the Midlands and split the difference...

Dan: Where nobody lives but everyone would have to travel the same distance to get to. Equal opportunity annoyance!

Phil: Or make it fair on everyone.

Dan: Anyway, we settled on a park not too far outside London.

Phil: We've been traveling the world a lot over the last couple years. Why not make everyone come to us for a change? [Phil does his fake evil laugh]

Dan: I really liked the idea of getting to sleep in my bed until the day of the ceremony. We could have done the destination thing, but a little patch of quiet close to home seemed...nice.

Phil: But we checked venues everywhere!

**Setting: That one park in the north that Phil went to.**

Phil: [zooming in on the [homoerotic statues](https://geniusphilester.tumblr.com/post/187525820396/phils-instagram-story-september-2-2019)] Wrestling.

**Setting: Phil's set**

Dan: So we had clothes, and we had a place to do it. What more could be left?

Phil, wide-eyed: EVERYTHING.

Dan: The menu, the wine, the flowers, the decorations...

Phil: How documented did we want the ceremony and reception to be?

Dan: How big did we want our respective parties to be?

Phil: Did we even want wedding parties?

Dan, nodding: Here's the thing. When you've been together as long as me and Phil have, you start to wonder, how much of this is necessary?

Phil: And there's the whole gay thing, too.

Dan: What about this is heteronormative, capitalist culture trying to impose their standards on something private and personal, and what about it is what we actually want?

Phil, laughing: Dan wasn't the only one to have an existential crisis this time around.

Dan, whispering: It's a joke, but it's also not a joke.

[footage of Dan on his existential crisis bench, and Phil lying on the couch staring up at the ceiling]

Phil, looking at Dan: I don't think it helped that it was just for us.

Dan: I mean, if we'd been planning it specifically for you guys, we would have known what we wanted and clung to it tightly. But we were doing it for us, and also the people we invited to the wedding, who are a different enough bunch that we couldn't figure out what they wanted.

Phil: I suggested at one point that our theme should be Free!, and I was only joking a little bit.

Dan: At least you didn't say Attack on Titan.

[zoom in on Phil with the Attack on Titan music in the background]

Dan: We finally decided on a home theme. What was home to us? What kind of home did the people around us represent?

Phil: It was a lot of fun. We named our tables after the different places we've lived. The Manchester apartment, the two London apartments...

Dan: The different tour buses...

Phil: Various hotel rooms.

Dan: That was honestly my favourite. We took pictures we had from tour and made the hotel rooms the place settings.

Phil: I don't know, I liked that the Manchester flat table had the picture of my washing machine.

Dan: It was the wrong Manchester flat, but it was too perfect to resist. I just wish you'd let me make an editing tips table.

Phil, smirking: My bedroom at my parents' house.

Dan: Kill Bill poster as the tablecloth.

Phil: And then our table was the forever home table..

Dan: Which was mostly just aesthetic, but in a way that suggested the kind of decor we're looking at.

Phil: Whoa, don't get ahead of yourself. We haven't even gotten married yet! [After a confused look from Dan] In the story!

Dan, a couple seconds later: Right, in the story. We figured out the theme, and everything fell into place with relative ease from there.

Phil: We hired a wedding planner, but we kind of...did most of the work ourselves.

Dan: Hey, we needed help getting the good deals and the logistics settled.

Phil: We didn't _need_ the help. But I was trying to be more well-rounded. Norman needed me! I couldn't spend fourteen-hour days responding to catering emails and interviewing photographers.

Dan: ...although we did interview all of the photographers. We just kept it closer to six hours a day.

Phil: Until November or so.

Dan: Yes, here's the thing. We decided to do a Christmas wedding.

Phil: In case it snowed!

Dan: Which it didn't around London, but Phil knew that if we went more southern, that was likely to happen.

Phil, sighing: I checked the weather. It did snow in Manchester.

Dan: Not much.

Phil: You checked the weather, too?

Dan: What can I say? I second guess myself even when it's far too late to change anything.

Phil: Late November was the make-or-break time.

**Setting: The second London flat, late at night. Phil's looking very Sleepless Night With Phil, with rumpled hair and glasses in a bed with a black-and-white comforter.**

Phil, sounding sleepy over the sound of typing: Dan hasn't slept yet, and I'm not sure why.

Dan, off-screen, typing paused: Because our order for Christmas crackers fell through, and I'm trying to find a last-minute fix.

Phil: Is it last minute when it's not even December yet?

Dan: It is when it's a wedding!

Phil: Honestly, I'm just glad we held out this long.

**Setting: Phil's set.**

Dan: It was kind of like Interactive Introverts, where it seemed like for a week at the end there that nothing was working and that everyone was going to go on their holidays before we could get it fixed, and we'd have to...i don't know. Reschedule? Get married in paper sacks?

Phil: Hey, if all else failed, there was always pyjamas.

Dan: We could have worn the clothes from the mukbang.

Phil: It would have been comfortable!

Dan: One of Phil's ideas was a pyjama-party wedding.

Phil: In the winter? Do you know how cozy that would have been?

Dan: If I wore all black in extreme heat, do you think I care about comfort more than aesthetic?

Phil: I do know the man I married.

Dan: And yes, the wedding did happen. And it's probably a big tease, but we're not going to show you much.

**Setting: The wedding. It's mostly a couple of shots of Dan and Phil being Dan and Phil: posing sarcastically in front of things, looking offended at each other. But there's also a filmed clip of them walking down the aisle after vows holding hands.**

Phil: We want our privacy, and it was a really special day. But we also wanted to have you all involved because you've been such a big part of our lives during this whole process.

Dan: It would have felt strange not to let you guys in on it a little.

Phil: It was such a nice day.

Dan: Couldn't have asked for better.

**Setting: Phil's set.**

Phil: So there you have it! Dan and I survived a year of wedding planning.

Dan: Which means we got married.

Phil: Oh yeah, that is what it means.

Dan: We're not changing our names, if that's what you were hoping for.

Phil: Definitely not professionally.

Dan: We're the same as we ever were. Just with some kind of legal agreement that will make things harder if everything goes to shit.

Phil: Don't say that!

Dan: And I guess we got to show everyone how much we love each other.

[Phil looks fondly at Dan and kisses him on the cheek]

Dan: Aren't you going to do the endscreen?

Phil: Maybe next time. Goodbye!

[Phil covers the lens with his hand]

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post](https://geniusphilester.tumblr.com/post/187526138076/a-year-in-the-life-2723-words-by-geniusphilester)!


End file.
